A Shop of Ideas: Ideology Epilogue, and Call For Questions

A Comic Shop's Skrull Kill Krew in Action
Hey Fandom! Thanks for reading, recommending, and commenting! We got a
ton of feedback from the Ideology series of articles and more ideas
from meeting so many new people in this industry recently. We’re back
from New York Comic Con and ready to rock.

New York Comic Con was amazing, I was stopped several times by comic
retailers who liked this column and wanted me to keep it up (I wore an
“A Comic Shop” t-shirt so people could recognize me). One thing we kept
hearing from the retailers was, while they agreed with a lot of our
philosophy, they aren’t able to carry it out to the degree we do. Well,
at this time last year, we weren’t doing many of the things we’re doing
today. Two years ago, we were still marking up back issues. You see,
implementing new ideas is a process. It takes time, and sometimes,
leaps of faith. It’s okay to be scared of change, even if you agree the
change is needed. Small steps are fine, and by all means, people don’t
have to do exactly what we do. Our hope is to get comic shops to think
about how they can use their love and passion for comics to grow the
industry.

Putting our ideology out there was a lot of fun, but through the
feedback we learned and refined our stance. With our “no more back
issues” and format neutral stances, we learned the need to clarify what
we stand for, which is that we are against comics as investment, but not
against collecting. Some people simple say they “collect” comics
because they want to read the whole history of a character. For some
people, back issues are viewed as “readable,” and not as collectible
investments. Though we think most comic fans are readers and not
collectors, we will continue to make a point to state we are against
investment and speculation with new comics. To this end, we will point
out when Wizard magazine or the Free Comic Book Day website use
the term collecting when they are advocating investment based
speculation (like buying multiple copies of new comics with the intent
to resell at a profit). We don’t feel there’s a voice out there
championing comics as an entertainment art form, and we want to be that
voice. The idea of ordering and promoting the best in comics, and then
selling out of the monthlies, moving on to selling later printings,
then selling the collections of that same stuff just makes sense.
Marking up and maintaining the monthlies that didn’t sell takes up time
and resources that could be better used to order and promote the next
batch of monthlies resulting in better sell-through. Just a decade ago,
many old school comic shops were bemoaning about how the death of the
monthly comic was soon to come because of the rise of graphic novel
collections. However, that ended up not being the case. We have a
booming new format and still have comics coming in every Wednesday (or
Thursday).

Also, even though we realized that some readers prefer one
type of format to another and we want to be format neutral, we’re still
biased towards graphic novels. We are promoters, and a graphic novel is
generally a whole story with a solid shipping date that is easily
reordered. As for calling this collected format a graphic novel and not
a trade paperback, the new issue of Entertainment Weekly (#1036 with the Watchmen
covers) explains that Watchmen was “first published as a 12-issue
serial in 1986” and “was later published as a “graphic novel” and
helped comics infiltrate bookstores.” The official Watchmen website is
broken down in two categories: “the movie” and “the graphic novel”. So,
since we know people other than comic insiders are using the term
graphic novel to describe content to the masses, can we please just use
that and do away with the industry insider trade paperback term?

Change is scary for comic retailers and it certainly doesn’t carry the
warm nostalgic feeling life long comic fans get from sniffing old back
issues. The Ideology we have on investment, back issues, and format
stirred up some controversy. What was weird for us though is that there
are plenty of people who disagree with our ideology, but have nothing
bad to say about our creativity. Our “My Free Comic Day” program is
well received and our events are generally applauded, but we couldn’t
manage all of this if we hadn’t stop following traditional comic
retailing. We just wouldn’t have the time, space, energy, or manpower
to pull off so many events if we still did the whole marking up and
stockpiling back issues thing. Additionally, comic creators and
publishers don’t benefit from us marking up new books or selling back
issues, they benefit from us selling their new stuff and their
collections. We are on the same page as the talent and the publishers,
so we can focus on working together to get more people to read and
enjoy more of what they print each week. Giving up old ways of doing
things doesn’t mean we are against them in principle. It means, in
practice, we have time for innovation.

Currently we are working on a lot of innovative events and will have
plenty of new ideas and initiatives to bring to comic fans and
retailers. The next thing we have going on as a shop and our next
article will be on Watchmen promotions. We’ve been giving away the $1.50 Watchmen #1
reprint and we’ll have a “READ MOORE” promotion going on in the store
(read more Alan Moore). We rented out the closest theater to us for an
exclusive Watchmen midnight release and we’ll also be at another
theater giving out free comics. The biggest promotional opportunity is
“After Watchmen, What’s Next?” DC’s amazing program of $1 first issues
of mainly mature reader books handpicked to get a Watchmen fan to dive
further into comics. We’ll have our suggestions on how retailers should
take advantage of this program as well as an interview with one of DC
Comic’s marketing managers. Look for that next week. Then we’re working
with Daniel Way to promote Deadpool’s newest graphic novel release.
After that we’ll write about our work with the FX Show here April 17-19
and how a comic shop can benefit from sponsoring a convention.

Ruby as 'The Pro'
We’re
going to do a promotional push for Palmiotti and Amanda Connor’s Power Girl #1, maybe even work with Ruby Rocket who helped us generate renewed interest in Conner’s The Pro.
Marvel Digital has gotten a lot of people talking and a lot of
retailers nervous, but we’re excited about what they have planned and
how comic shops can be a part of it. If any fan, comic shop employee,
or comic shop owner wants to work with us to promote, get in touch.

If there’s anything anyone wants to know about us, ask. If you have any
questions about comic retailing in general or what we do specifically,
post a comment. If you have any questions about comic marketing for
Marvel, DC, Image, or Dark Horse, we know who to ask and will get you
an answer. Thanks for reading and for having a passion for comics!